Chung-in Moon and Jong-yun Bae, political science professors at Yonsei University, contend that the “Bush Doctrine” raised the odds against the establishment of a constructive U.S.-DPRK relationship. “Its moral absolutism, hegemonic unilateralism, offensive realism, and focus on weapons of mass destruction and global terrorism,” they assert, “radically changed the terms of American engagement with North Korea.”3 Not only was Bush unenthusiastic about international agreements, but his approach gave very little consideration to the interests of the Republic of Korea (ROK). Shortly after becoming president of South Korea early in 1997, Kim Dae-jung initiated a “Sunshine Policy” toward the DPRK that sought engagement, while putting off reunification, not least because it might cost $3.2 trillion to rehabilitate North Korea.4 Kim Dae-jung’s pursuit of reconciliation climaxed in a personal meeting with Kim Jong ll in Pyongyang, where he stated on 17 June 2000 that “Koreans no longer need to live under the constant threat of an imminent war.”5 Unfortunately, the summit did not lead to new confidence building measures. In part, this was because North Korea was becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the lack of progress toward implementing the Agreed Framework former President Jimmy Carter had negotiated in 1994 to end the first nuclear crisis when Washington almost staged air strikes to destroy the Yongbyon facility. “In that deal,” journalist Todd Crowell explains, “Pyongyang agreed to shut down its one operating reactor, stop construction on two others and leave the nuclear fuel untouched rather than extracting plutonium from the spent fuel rods” in return for 500,000 tons annually of heavy fuel oil to burn power plants, $4.5 billion to build two nuclear-powered electricity plants that did not produce weapons-grade (plutonium) waste, and negotiations to normalize U.S.-DPRK relations.6